The Offing: Sister Quintana & the Berlin Germany Mission

I can't believe time is flying by. We have begun our Light the World initiative here in Flensburg, and let me just say it has been quite stressful. However, it has been so touching for me to see how Sister Vreugdenhil and I are being blessed for our efforts.
We have been crazy busy with our plans and it has been challenging. A few tears have been shed here and there. Some chocolate has been eaten, okay a lot of chocolate. And many sprints to the bus stops have been sprinted. And here's the thing, it's only been 3 days of December.
Within this past week, prayer has taken a whole new meaning for me. This week was rough and I don't think I had ever come close to wanting to give up as I did this week. We're giving it our all and somehow we always get thrown curve balls. With all the things that we've confronted, I've learned that God is God and he doesn't just abandon us. I have asked myself many times this week how things are going to work out with the plans…

Today has been just a crazy day. From being notified my instagram account was hacked to realizing we forgot something in our apartment. Deep breath. All is well now.
This week has been the beginning of greatness here in Flensburg. Sister Vreugdenhil and I have big plans for Flensburg. Oh yeah, we ended up staying for this next transfer. We'll be asked how long we have been here and Sister Vreugdenhil will look at me and I'll look right back at her and say, ''You were here before me haha.''
We have our Light the World campaign this coming month! And let me just say, we are PUMPED. Flensburg is going to be LIT like a light bulb the entire month long. Well, at least that's our plan. Considering we're still in November and we're already confronting challenges, we know it won't be easy but it will totally be worth it.
With the many things we've had to face, I can't help but think of the Standard of Truth prophesied by Joseph Smith, ''The…

Hello! I don't have much time to write, but I thought I would share an awesome miracle we had yesterday. This week has been really tough for us. Yesterday had a very rough start to our day. We walked into our sacrament meeting and were not doing so good. As the sacrament was being passed, we noticed a man we didn't know. He was too far away for us to talk to him so we waited until the meeting was over. We went over and found out quickly he doesn't speak much German. His mother tongue is Portuguese and with the help of God we were able to communicate with him through a Spanish-Portuguese combination (That itself was a tender mercy because since being on my mission I have spoken with Italians without having a problem, but I have always struggled with Portuguese). As we spoke with him and asked him who he was, we found out he was a visitor. He told us he has been in Germany for about 2 years now and is looking for a christian church to attend with his family. He said he went …

Well, I completely failed last week. You'd think that after being in Germany for a year, I'd know how to spell brötchen correctly-- especially since they're my favorite haha. You live and you learn!
This past week we went to serve in our local Tafel, which is basically a fresh food and hot meal service place for people living under social services. We were put in the fresh fruit section, I was to give out pineapples. Since the Tafel hadn't received much, or at least initially they didn't, I was asked to limit distribution to families of 3 or more. There were probably 200 people that came throughout the 3 hours we were there. Within that time, not a lot of families that qualified to receive a pineapple wanted one. They wanted lemons, blueberries, raspberries, and grapes. They really wanted grapes. As they got to me, many of the people said they didn't want one. And then there were many individuals or families of 2 that really wanted a pineapple and it tore me to …

This past week was quite a revelatory week for me.
I'm coming up on my year mark this week, and "coincidentally" enough this past week I was on exchanges with our Sister training leaders in the area that I was trained in. On Tuesday, we got on a train and headed to Hamburg for the next 24 hours. We pulled into the train station and it felt like I had never left. Things just continued to get even stranger from there! We took the U-bahn back to the apartment where I used to live. I spent the day with one of the Sisters there and we went by on a Spanish member from the congregation I served in for the time I was in Hamburg. It was amazing to be able to see her again, and within 5 minutes I found out that I'm losing my Spanish quite rapidly... yikes.
The biggest miracle that happened while I was back in Hamburg was that we came in contact with a man that was baptized in another area of Hamburg (that area now belongs to the area where the Sisters are serving). I remember m…

Well, all the Christmas stuff is coming out... And I could not be more excited. We have begun planning for our Christmas initiative and I'm looking forward to it haha. Time is flying by very quickly. I cannot fathom the idea that it's almost been a year since I left home for the sweet work of the Lord in this beautiful country and culture.
This week we had a council with other missionaries in areas around ours and I learned a lot from it. One of the Elders shared an analogy about being in the army. He said that as a solider in the army, they are asked to carry 100+ pound rucksacks on their backs. He said that the best soldiers are able to carry their rucksack and run, crawl, climb, etc. He then continued to say that regardless of how strong the soldier was, every soldier never hesitated to take off their rucksack the minute they are required not to carry it. He then told us that as soldiers in the army of God, we need to take off our rucksacks too. Christ suffered the pains of …

We not only had our zone conference this past week, but we also all got flu shots! I was not excited at all, but I lived. I'm grateful our Mission President and his wife care to make sure we are all healthy for the upcoming winter!
Within my first weeks here, we felt we needed to try and go by on a member of ours. So we went and klingeled his apartment and out came Manuel (who was not our member). We had a lot of time, and we asked him if we could teach him the lesson we had planned to teach our member. He thought about it and then said to wait, so he went back inside the building and came out and said he had locked himself out on accident; therefore, he had time to meet with us. And that's the beginning with our friend!
Within the second week of coming, he came to visit our church! And the best part of it all was that the member from Ghana we were looking for that day ended up coming to church!!! And he was late, but when he came in, he sat right next to our friend. It was a be…

I didn't plan on writing today, so I'm going to do my best to type as fast as I can. I have hit major writer's block, but I don't want to continue to not write home!!
Quick update: Transfer calls came last week, and Sister Vreugdenhil and I are staying in Flensburg. It felt like April this past week. I got a splinter in my finger.
This past weekend was our fast and testimony meeting during church, this just means that we take the time to fast for 2 consecutive meals and on Sunday we all have the opportunity to share our testimony with the congregation if we want to. Elder Carl B. Pratt gave an amazing talk about the purpose of fasting and the blessings that come with it, read it here.
One of our senior members shared her testimony about God. She shared an experience she has during World War II. She told us that she was with her mother and younger brother in their garden. In the time of the war, they had very little to sustain themselves. She said that while they were in t…

I don't think I have shared my testimony about the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the Book of Mormon as many times as I have within this past week! It has been quite faith building.
I had a pretty interesting experience on Saturday specifically. We got up and planned for our day, like normal. We had no appointments made out, so we planned 6 hours of talking to people on the streets (aka finding). As we continued to plan where we wanted to go finding, Sister Vreugdenhil and I instantly felt that we needed to leave Flensburg and go to a further part of our area. We looked at a map of our area (our area covers the west to the east coast of the border to Denmark and South, extending to the Schleswig area). We both felt attracted to Schleswig and Kappeln, the east. We're supposed to go Schleswig next week, so we decided to go to Kappeln. Almost immediately we felt that we needed to check the buses that would take us there. We both felt that it …